The Mayor's Wish
by DarthTenebrus
Summary: Mayor Richard Wilkins wishes (oops!) that he was Mayor of another town where the Slayer doesn't exist...


_Author's Note - Disclaimer follows at end of story._

Mayor Richard Wilkins the Third (or First, depending on one's point of view) saw the enormous pile of C4 and TNT and various other and sundry high explosives in the library of the high school and groaned. He had Ascended; he was supposed to be immortal now, and thus damn near indestructible.

How had it come to this?

For an instant that seemed like an eternity, which is what is rumoured to occur when one faces the last moment of one's existence, whether mundane or supernatural, the Olvikan demon, the true demon that Wilkins had become, saw the initial spark that preceded the subsequent detonation of all those explosives, the tiny fire that would birth the conflagration and the compression wave that would smash the high school building and all its contents into rubble; the tiny flash of light and heat spread from one small point which seemed to be the sum total of the entire universe, and all it touched became a bright, warm spot that began to heat the air around it, exciting the atoms and molecules to vibrating more and more with the sudden energy transfer until they collided with the neighbouring particles, sending them in random directions and colliding with their respective neighbours until, in the next infinitesimal moment, the Olvikan serpent felt the heat and saw the flash of light, wondering if in fact it might have been similar to what one witnesses in the fatal moment of a nuclear explosion.

Though it was not nuclear, the roar of the explosion blew out his extremely sensitive tympanic membranes, and the heat flash blinded his eyes, fusing the rods and cones of the retinae in the brief eternal split second before incinerating his flesh and collapsing his organs in the concussion wave that followed. He still managed to keep his essence intact, though, and he wondered in the instant before the fire enveloped and charred the brain of the Olvikan whether or not D'Hoffryn was laughing out loud at Richard's sudden misfortune. He was particularly incensed that D'Hoffryn was not in his place, but ironically, though he had never stooped to using the W-word during his entire one hundred fifty years of existence, he was tempted now, and in the last possible moment before his consciousness would begin to dissipate he invoked the W-word….

 _Oh I wish that I had been Mayor of another town where that gosh darned Slayer never existed…._

And somewhere, beyond his range of perception, in the realm of Arashmahar, D'Hoffryn heard his plea and whispered, chuckling at the strange irony and the eternal caveat that followed about being careful for what one wished….

"Wish granted, Your Honor…."

And for Richard Wilkins the Third (or the First, depending on one's point of view…), time stood still, and all became blackness and silence…

 **Some decades later, in another town…**

Reality came crashing back into his consciousness as Richard observed a desk before him; he was sitting at it. It was a fine desk, made from the most durable plastics and polymers in town, as was the chair in which he was sitting. The false leather was also made of plastic, though one could not tell from the appearance. Before him was an easel flanked on both sides by men who he noticed were pitching a product to him…

 _I must be their boss and the CEO of their company…._

Upon closer examination, he noticed that the easel was supporting some sort of advanced audio-visual device that was much flatter and thinner than a television set and VCR. One of the employees touched something on a corner of the screen, and whatever was there expanded to fill the screen. It was another audio-visual presentation with the logo of the company…

O'Hare Air…

Richard Wilkins' eyes widened slightly at this revelation. _Damn that D'Hoffryn, he tricked me!_

To the men, he asked to be excused while he went to use the bathroom, and once he was there, he stood for a good long moment before the lowered mirror. In fact everything had been slightly lowered to accommodate his shortened stature. In shock, he looked in the mirror once again.

Before him gazed back the face of Aloysius O'Hare, president and CEO of O'Hare Air…

In his mind, he was cursing D'Hoffryn for his rotten luck.

 _Why, oh why did I have to become Mayor of Thneedville?_

Fin.

 _Disclaimer and Postnote: As with everything else, I own nothing. Mutant Enemy and the Seuss estate do. Saw the Lorax yesterday once again and this thought occurred to me. Of course, the plot bunny demanded to be fed, and so I had to go to the store and buy carrots...Bunny happy, Anya not...go fig_


End file.
